In the film, the late musician is remembered through never-before-seen archival footage, exclusive demo recordings, rare performances, audio archives and original interviews with her loved ones.

For most of the documentary's running time, director Kevin Macdonald brings Houston's sadly curtailed life to the screen in a manner reminiscent of Amy, Asif Kapadia's 2015 documentary about the late singer Amy Winehouse: It begins with the handsome voice and the career full of promise, and then come the drugs, the bad-influence husband, the grifting family members, and finally the tragic death. A coroner's report into her death cited heart disease and drug use as contributing factors. Dee Dee died four years before Houston, in 2008. Macdonald conducted around 70 interviews, from Clive Davis to Houston'sBodyguard costar Kevin Costner.

Upon learning about the betrayal by her father, Houston was crushed and unfortunately, her marriage with Bobby Brown was also falling apart at that point of time.

Her brother Gary Garland also speaks about their childhood in the documentary and discloses his greatest trauma was being abused "by a female relative".

While poring through hundreds of hours of private home footage for his film, Macdonald told Vanity Fair that he had suspicions that something terrible had happened in Houston's life. She seemed kind of asexual in a odd way. He told me that he was abused by a woman in the family, and Pat Houston told me that, yes, Whitney had said to her, "This is what happened".